Thanks for the advice Weaw. I'll restrain myself from spending to much effort on equipping my gladiators.

Initially I was using greens but as I got more gold switched to using blues more to match up better with the gladiators in veteran who use a lot of blue and some purple. My win rates dropped on getting to veteran but with challenges opened up they are going back up so I may be progressing too fast. I wanted to spend something on the game since I've played it a bit now so I got the $10 special with its memberships meaning more fights, more training points and even faster progression.